Ellsworth Kelly: Slow Curve

Ellsworth Kelly: Slow Curve

Ellsworth Kelly: Fruits and Flowers

From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation

Coinciding with the opening of the new Feibes & Schmitt Gallery, The Hyde features two exhibitions devoted to the printed work of Ellsworth Kelly, one of the most influential abstract artists of the Postwar era. With more than 70 prints, Slow Curve examines Kelly’s experimentation with curved fields of color, ranging from tight ellipses and shapes with rounded corners to broad arcs and segments. Through a selection of 26 lithographs, the accompanying show, Fruits & Flowers, reveals the root sources for many of Kelly’s curved shapes derived from line-drawn images of plants, fruits, and flowers. These two concurrent presentations of Kelly’s prints, one abstract and the other representation, assess how the curve was sourced, reshaped, and continually revisited throughout the artist’s long career. Both exhibitions are from the Collections of Jordan Schnitzer and His Family Foundation in Portland, Oregon. Organized by The Hyde Collection, the exhibitions are curated by the Museum Director Erin Coe and Jonathan Canning, Director of Curatorial Affairs.

About Ellsworth Kelly

Widely recognized as one of the most important American artists of the last fifty years, Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) redefined abstract art through his bold paintings, sculpture, prints, and drawing. Born in Newburgh, New York, he studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn before joining the U. S. Army in 1943. He served in the military until 1945, and then attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from 1946 until 1947. The following year, Kelly enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under the G.I. Bill. In France, he developed his distinctive style of painting, which features canvases painted in a single field of color. By the end of the 1950s, Kelly was internationally recognized for his canvases, which often took the shape of non-rectangular forms. In 1970, Kelly moved to Spencertown, New York. In 1973, he had his first retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and his second retrospective was at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1996. Along with numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, Ellsworth Kelly has been awarded many honors, including the National Medal of the Arts in 2013, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence.

Thank you: The Adirondack Trust Company, Fenimore Asset Management, Town of Queensbury, NYS Council on the Arts, Saratoga Living, Lake George Mirror